Webinar #24 Art Action Profiles

In this webinar, we got to talk to two of our 2017 Artistic Activism grantees, Arian Kajtezovic of Croatia and Kate McGrew of Ireland about TRANSummer Camp, A Day in the Life of An Escort and their other projects.

Arian and Kate succeeded in making creative, culturally-specific projects that involved in-depth participation and great creative output. Arian’s project was a collaboration with members of the Croatian trans community to create a series of actions to point out bias in health care against trans people, and Kate’s project gave voice to sex workers in the midst of violence against them in Ireland. We talked about what made these projects good examples of creative activism both in terms of the successes and challenges. They both found that they needed to change their plans for their actions in the midst of their project, owing to changes in participant’s feedback, changes in the political and social situations, time, money, staffing, etc. All common issues when making creative actions. We heard about how they navigated this terrain and created strong projects, and what those projects have led to after the fact.

Arian Kajtezovic of Trans Mreža Balkan from Zagreb, Croatia told us about the project “TRANSummer Camp and the Ethical Clinic for Gender and Sex Characteristics”. The TRANSummer Camp on the Croatian coast inspired members of the Croation trans community to become creative activists, and led to a public media campaign, video series and event advertising the “opening” of a (fake) clinic for trans health. The project included an ambitious survey on the healthcare experiences and needs of trans and gender variant people in the Balkans in multiple languages.

Kate McGrew of SWAI Ireland talked with us about A Day in the Life of An Escort: A Dublin-based photo project/online feed to increase visibility of sex workers and increase the sex workers’ sense of community of voice, in response to a spate of violence against the community in Ireland.